（4）
My friends’ trousers-legs had bulged too, nothing else could be found as our container. We had no choice but to go back.
The brothers staggered toward to me and collected all trousers together, then put them on buffalo’s back.
As soon as we disembarked, a terrible idea suddenly appealed in my mind:
”Oh my God! How can we enter the village in such undressing condition?” I cried out with tears trickling down.
“It doesn’t matter!”” None of others’ business, just go ahead!” they responded me cheerfully.
“It’s incredible. How can we do in this way?” I rejected this idea firmly.
“Come on my friend! here is countryside” the elder brother said.
“Yes, not like in your town, no one cares whether you dress or undress here. We even nakedly walking, streaking all summer, who cares?” the younger brother explained further.
I had no idea but to follow them, since I didn’t want to throw the seeds away to get my dress.
Bowing my body and covering my privacy with my balm, I had hobbled back to the hut.
Found me in such sorry-looking condition, my sister was petrified. She promptly dressed me with my brother-in-law’s trousers and gently touching my scratches with tears.
“Oh, dear! My little brother you should tell me beforehand. If I had known you were going to Dashahu, I would never permit you to do so.” She was so horrified that she immediately went into panting.
My cousin inherited my uncle’s genes and suffered from sever bronchitis ever since her childhood.
The bronchitis is a local epidemic in our hometown, which could be attributed to our geographical condition.
Located in south of the Po Yang Hu lake, our land was constantly swept out by the chilly mistral from Siberia.
In those difficult years, people always had insufficient dress, therefore, the cough spread out everywhere.
For a common sufferer of bronchitis, the most critical inducement is coldness. But to my cousin, the disease may happen in any time for any reasons.
It was the early summer in 1954, when I fully recognized the sever nature of herillness.
At that time, most portion of my hometown was flooded.
Fortunately, my home was located in the foot of Doshang Mountain. Higher position made us free from the homeless anxiety. But my cousin wasn’t that lucky. All of her land, property had been submerged. Lucky enough, her family managed to escape from the flood, before the dike breaking down.
I still remember the scene when my cousin’s family, as flooding refugee, together with their farming cow and a lovely calf came to my home for temporary lodging.
At that time she was merely 24 year’s old*, but the figure appeared in front of us, was older than 40.
“ My dear aunt,” she said, leaning on my doorway with a pair of blank eyes.
“……” but her following words were immediately interrupted by a painful pant.
Noticed the situation, My mum put down her needlework and approached to them in hurry. Mum supported my cousin with hands and asked me to give her a cup of hot tea.
Mum settled all of them down in our spare rooms, however, she had trouble to host the cows, since there was no cowshed neither stall to rest the livestock in a common civil residence. Therefore, Dongshan Mountain was the only place for them to depasture.
In that year, my cousin’s misfortune wasn’t limited to the cursed flood; it came from worse to the worst.
One day, the cow mother and her baby were rambling on the top of Dongshan Mountain. The dense grasses made them so happy that they suddenly ran wild. Maybe they misunderstood the little plain as the vast moor of Dashahu. Needless to say, after a while they all dropped to a cliff.
Had such a monstrous strike, my cousin immediately fell to bed. Bronchitis plus high fever made her dying.
My mum was in such panic that not only she called doctors, but also kneed andburnt joss sticks in any shrine she could ever found.
……
In middle autumn, the flood had receded, but my cousin’s illness kept outbreaking from time to time.
In spite of my mum’s advise, she insisted on returning home.
After that, our communication had been disconnected for respective life making, until this time when I visited them again for hungry reason._________________Practice made every effort perfect